Lifting the Veil on the Bentley
Because I’ve been talking about the Bentley being Crowley’s black horse of late, I’ve had a nudge to talk about the number plate. I know it’s explained as an easter egg in relation to Monty Python, but I think we can explore it a bit further than that.
It’s worth having a quick look at this older post from @fuckyeahgoodomens where they explain the inspiration was from an animated scene from Monty Python's Meaning of Life .
The following is from the linked article.
As a nod to Terry Gilliam, who once tried to do a movie version of Good Omens, Gaiman and Mackinnon threw in a little reference to Gilliam’s origins doing animation for Monty Python.
“The license plate of Crowley’s Bentley is ‘Curtain’ backwards,” Gaiman said, because of the writing on the mausoleum in the suicidal leaves section of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. “Curtain backwards, like it’s the final curtain,” Mackinnon explained.
Before I get into all the connotations of “curtains,” there should be two things you notice about the “CURTIN” written on the mausoleum. The first is the spelling itself. It’s shortened to look like the Irish surname Curtin, so the mausoleum appears to belong to a real person. Curtin is an anglicized version of Mac Curtain, which means Son of the Crooked, or Son of the Harp, as the ‘crooked’ refers the hunchback shape of the Irish harp. I wouldn’t read too much into that, its probably more just a way of getting an actual curtain reference into that scene.
The other thing is that is not just backwards, it is mirror-image, as if you are looking at it from the other side of the mirror. So we should ask ourselves – which side are we looking from? And why does this matter?
While director Mackinnon mentions it referring to the “final curtain,” we need to start even further back than that to understand what the final curtain is, because even that has two meanings, even if only in a general sense. But because this is the GOmens AU, you can guarantee we’re going to find out there is more to it than that.
We need to go beyond the veil.
To go “beyond the veil” has become a euphemism for passing into death, or that unknowable place people go once they die. It was originally a figurative reference to the area in a Jewish Temple that was separated from the main body of the Temple by decorative curtains, called veils. The veils were specially woven, often with the image of a Cherubim woven in by a skilled worker; it was not allowed to be sewed on or added later. Each panel of the veil would display a different face of the Cherubim, such as the lion on one side, an eagle on the other, and so on. Only the priests could go past the veil into the most holiest of places. The veil was symbolic of separating men and their sins from the glory of God.
The word ‘veil’ can be translated into English as ‘curtain,’ so the two words are almost interchangeable in respect of this discussion. I was interested to see that the word veil comes from the Latin word velum, which also means ‘sail,’ as in “to move, to drive a vessel or vehicle forward.” I have previously commented that the Bentley should probably be a “she,” as traditionally all ships were female, and that’s a tradition we still see carried into the modern day, thousands of years after its origin. I’ve even seen modern day space probes – little ships sailing the solar system – referred to as she! But I’ll not be pedantic about it, don’t worry.
Keep your hands off my bitch, bitch.
So the curtain, or veil, is the boundary between life and death. Only – we are seeing it from the other side. And in the GOmens AU this “other side” is very real, and one Aziraphale and Crowley walk through with both ease and without much thought. They are agents of those on the other side of the veil, yet they walk with Humanity in a solid reality on the surface of the Earth. They know the other side is real. When wee Morag complains about Elspeth’s body-snatching activity that the ones she digs up and sell won’t be able to go to Heaven because they will be cut up, Aziraphale tries to tell her it’s not like that, but she's not listening:
WEE MORAG: Aye. Tell that to the poor souls who will not get into heaven 'cause their bodies are all chopped into wee pieces.
AZIRAPHALE: Well, that isn't how it actually…
CROWLEY: Heaven isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know.
WEE MORAG: It's no right. I'm telling you.
CROWLEY: Yeah.
For humans, though, there is supposed to be no return once you cross that threshold.
When we, the viewer, see the two worlds meet, it's usually signaled by the presence of fog, mist or smoke. When Lesley the delivery driver meets Death, the fog arrives, as he is no longer in the living world. When Aziraphale and Crowley leave Tadfield Manor, we have smoke telling us we are seeing two different times and places at once - the past and the present are overlaid on one another.
The Bentley must exist in both the Human and subliminal worlds at the same time - how else can it drive like it does? It doesn't really need Crowley's hands on the wheel to guide it. It couldn't have started out like that - it was made by humans, but we all know the Bentley is more than just a car now.
It chooses the music to play on its radio, it refuses to speed when taking Aziraphale to Edinburgh until Crowley yells at it, it tries to follow the angel after he gets out at the end of the journey. How it got like this we will probably never find out, but we figure its become an extension of Crowley by close association, much like Aziraphale tends to influence the world around him without effort as well.
In terms of it being a black horse - well, now we get into some interesting stuff!
Horses have been companions to humans for longer than cars have been around, so there is lots of lore and symbology associated with them. Previous metas around S2 have focused on "dark horses," as they were specifically mentioned twice in the script. But a dark horse is not necessarily a black horse, and vice versa, so lets look at some of the aspects of black horse symbology in particular that could be relevant to the Bentley and it role in traveling between worlds.
Horses were the original vehicle of the ancient world. While Famine was supposed to ride a black horse (the others were white, red and pale green for pestilence,) the black horses could also be messengers of death, a demon bringing death or a guide to the afterlife. In the Illiad, Achilles sacrifices four horses on the funeral pyre to accompany Patroclus to Hades.
[Edit: I've just put myself through the pain of watching S2E6 again, for reasons, and realised why the ethereal lift is in the entrance to the Dirty Donkey - because a black horse is a guide between worlds! Of course!]
They became associated with the Devil during the Middle Ages as the church tried to break the link to old pagan rites. The broomsticks witches ride are supposed to represent horses. And then there is the sexual connection to horses...which leads in a round-about way to the practice of nailing horseshoes up for luck and protection. Although perhaps the burning horseshoe on Jasmine Cottage is more directly linked to the story of St Dunstan tricking the Devil and making him promise he would never cross the threshold of a house that had a horseshoe nailed to the door.
Our favourite Bentley has been beyond veil and returned. Though it was kept valiantly alive through the sheer will of Crowley to escape the unnatural flames of the Sigil of Odegra, it expired at the Tadfield airbase once Crowley arrived and finally released it. It was only appropriate that Crowley took a moment to acknowledge its service.
Then Adam restored it the next day. Resurrected it, one could say.
Time for the "final curtain" to wrap this meta up.
To "face the final curtain" is another euphemism for facing death, or at least an ending. It's the final curtain of a theatre show, after the encores are done. Its the final fall of the curtain at the end of a run. Sometimes we might say its just "curtains" for something or someone, meaning it will be ending, as a shortened form. But both Aziraphale and Crowley knows death isn't the end; its a beginning as well. Its just matter of perspective to them.
I've seen other writers associate this final curtain with the first Armagedon't, and now we appear to maybe be facing the "big one" in S3 - the Second Coming. I think that is too simplistic an association, especially for GO. The reversed side of the veil could be so many things: the final battle, the ability of our ethereal heroes to move between worlds, it could even be Crowley returning from the "death" of being one of the Fallen. As always, the meaning will be need to be considered within the context of the scene, and which side of the curtain we are looking from.
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Scratch is still a distinct entity from Alan. I think the Dark Presence has just found too good of a host and has itself gotten stuck - it tries to use Alan to escape, tries to leap into Casey, but Alan is able to draw it back in, and its temporary escape is colored by Alan's life and perspective, its own will wrenched into a different form by Alan's, even more pronounced than the fight over the narrative was in the first game.
It tries to escape, and Alan reels it back it. Alan tries to escape, and the Dark Presence reels him back in. Ad infinitum.
The entity called Scratch is Alan and the Dark Presence both, where they collide and get lost in and overwhelm each other. He's not just Alan's "dark side" - I think that's too literal and simplistic an interpretation, after Control very much established that beings and forces exist beyond us and beyond our reality, and when these games tend to put layers upon layers into any one thing.
I was struck by just how much of himself Alan has retained in the second game, despite everything. Even as he and the Dark Presence draw closer and closer together, taking on the appearance of the other, there's a stark difference between them still. And that difference illuminates (hah) the thread of similarity between them that has bound them together so tightly - the sheer, visceral desperation to escape, which the Dark Presence has been trying to do before Alan, before Zane, before Jagger.
The first game implies that the Dark Presence has existed for an unknown amount of time and has been trapped within the Dark Place for a very long time. Maybe it wasn't always a rageful, hateful being - isolation in the dark will do funny things to one's head, and desperation will do a number on you. (Which we see in Alan. Which is mirrored in Scratch, in the Dark Presence.)
The slidescape from which Hedron, Polaris, and the Hiss come, that Jesse calls "Hand," is desolate and empty, nothing but red sand and five pillars that Darling describes as being like outstretched fingers. I think Dark-Presence-as-Jagger is just one of those fingers reaching up from the lake, a crude imitation wearing a long-gone face to pull at the strings of Zane's grief. I think Scratch in American Nightmare is another one of those fingers, living darkness once again trying to breach reality but never quite managing to break the surface, an exaggerated parody wearing dark rumors made flesh for a skinsuit. And Scratch in AW2 is all of those fingers, the Dark Presence wearing Alan like a glove, only to find that when it breaches the surface at last, it can't take that glove off anymore.
The "Drowning" video in the Writer's Journey is one of the most brutal things to listen to in the game, and one of the clearest representations of the game as a whole, despite how incoherent it is. Thanks to some lovely voice work by Matthew Porretta, you can hear the switch from Alan to Scratch. You can hear them mirroring each other, and you can hear where the Dark Presence sounds just as despairing as Alan, even though the last several lines of the monologue don't actually leave Scratch's perspective. When it takes over, it's speaking to Alan, speaking from his perspective, speaking from it's own perspective, and Alan is speaking through it, all at once, and it gradually gets more unhinged and incoherent and despairing. I will highlight it with some thematic coloring.
I'm lost. I'm lost in the dark. Drowning. I'm drowning. I'm drowning. No way out. There's no way out. Sinking deeper. Deeper and deeper. This is hell. I'm in hell. I died. I wish I was dead. Let me die. I just want to sleep. Please let me sleep. I'm so tired. I just want to go home.
I've written so much. I write and I write. There's nothing left. It's all gone. I don't know how to write. All the words are gone. There's no more words. Where did they go? Did I eat the words? I don't recognize these words anymore. Are the words moving? This is familiar. Why is this familiar? I've been here before. Have I said this before? I've read this somewhere.
Where am I? Who am I? Alan Wake? Wake? That's a strange name. A. Wake. That sounds like a character's name. Did I write the name up, did I make that name up? I don't want to be a character. I don't want to be in this story. Just write me out of this story.
Ram these words down your throat. Make you choke on these words. I know the words. Secret words. You can't take the words. I eat the words. These are my words! Stop using the words! The words! Cult of the Word! This isn't your story. It never was your story. The story is a monster. The story will eat you alive. The darkness is coming! The darkness inside. This is my story! You're in my story! Get out of my story! You are a character in my story! You can't stop the story. This story will go on forever. There's no escape! You will never escape! You will drown here. You're stuck in a loop. You don't have a clue. You're lost. You lost the plot. I'll show you.
The Dark Presence is stuck. It's been stuck, been drowning, for a very long time, and now it's irrevocably tied itself to Alan. It can't get away from him, anymore than he can get away from it.
The end of the loop that we play through is a recognition of that, so perhaps later steps in the spiral will be steps to reintegrate Alan with pieces of himself that have gotten scattered - the pieces in Scratch, the pieces in whatever the hell "Zane" is. Maybe even steps to reintegrate the Dark Presence with its own lost pieces - the pieces in Scratch, the pieces scattered within and corrupting the Dark Place, the pieces in the light? I don't think either of them will be able to truly breach the surface and escape a neverending death by drowning without that.
While playing AW2, part of my brain became fully convinced that the "dark" and the "light" used to be a whole being that shattered and split at some point, and the "fight" alluded to in the first game and in American Nightmare was simply failed reintegration, over and over again. Because we see the Dark Presence splinter (into itself and Jagger and and Scratch and Alan), and we see the light / the "Bright Presence" splinter into almost nothing of itself anymore ("until nothing remains," into Zane and Alan), and we see that there's still a unity in that fracturing and dissolving (Alan and Scratch and "Zane" all having the same face).
We see that there's a light in Alice now - a photographer capturing light on a canvas, delivering a light switch through a shoebox, speaking cryptically across videos and phone lines. She's slipped into the role that light plays in the story, that Zane used to play, illuminating and guiding Alan up and down a spiraling path.
So maybe reintegration and unification is waiting somewhere down the road - Scratch and Alan, Alan and Alice, the memories and pieces of self that Alan and Alice have lost in the darkness, the "Dark" and "Bright" Presence, the dark and the light, constantly circling and never quite reaching each other until at last the branching spiral path reaches its end.
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